Where the Sun Shines, in this Best of All Possible Worlds
by KaralVanyel
Summary: Vkandis sends Karal back in time after the Mage Storms, to the front lines of the Valdemar/Karse war of Vanyel's time. His mission: to reclaim the Sun god's homeland by purging the demons that destroyed it for 700 years.
1. Karal, back in Time

In this Best of all Possible Worlds

It was the most intense heat that Karal had felt in his life, burning a road through his mind, tearing away his hope of a future even as his closeness to Vkandis Sunlord made him not care. He would act as a Channel and save the world from the mage storms. It did not matter if he failed to survive, for if he failed to try, no one would survive.

Karal could feel the presence of Vanyel, the legendary Demon Rider, the great and powerful enemy of Karse in the agent Lore, flowing through his mind, and the presence of his life-bonded Stefan/Tylendel, and he forgot his fear of them as the melding of minds left him with no doubt as to who and what they were.

Meanwhile, there arose, in the midst of this vast heat, the long-term musings of the Sunlord Vkandis, who had only wanted the best for many people, but who had had to endure centuries upon centuries of pointless, brutal, bloody war between Valdemar and his own adopted land of Karse, his adopted children the Karsites having committed atrocities in his name, unable to hear Him.

And in this moment of history, with the man most Karsites feared as the Demon Rider intimately inhabiting the mind of his best Sunpriest, Karal, it occurred to the Sunlord Vkandis that he could do one better than simply preventing the destruction of the world through the mage storms. He could prevent centuries of bloodshed. He could stop the corruption of Karse itself, before it happened. And so the God picked up Vanyel, picked up Tylendel, picked up Karal, and set them at the edge of the conflict. Back when Vanyel was Demon Rider. Back in the front of the Great Karsite Wars.

"What shall we do with them, 'Lendel?" Vanyel asked, gesturing to the Karsite prisoners that had been taken after the latest skirmish. His lover, whom in this universe had never yielded to the temptation for revenge, was still his guide, whom he turned to for everything. Even the gentle prodding open of his potential gifts, which had eventually led Yfandes to Choose him, and brought him out of the thumb of Lord Within, many years before.

"They'll be tried under the Truth Spell," Tylendel replied. "And those who participated in the slaughter of the Gifted will pay for their crimes."

The Karsites had come to believe that the Gifted were evil; they rounded them up as youngsters and put them to death, calling them demons, as stubborn as they were bloody. Superstition had turned these men into child-killers, and the women, if not in the forefront, held the same beliefs.

A single spell bound all of the men that had been left alive on the field after the mage blast, and Vanyel set them up one by one in a spelled prison. All were dressed for battle, covered in blood, fighting the binding spell, their lips moving as they mouthed enraged curses.

"Did you kill any Gifted persons, by capture outside of battle, in Valdemar or Karse?" Tylendel intoned, holding the blue light of the Truth spell above the first ones' head. The man gave a gruesome list; by the law of Queen Elspeth he was sentenced to death. The next man beside him was younger, more human-seeming. His list was smaller. His death sentence burned Vanyel to the core. "It should not have been this way," he whispered to his lover. "He was not born an evil man."

Vanyel used his magic to lift a young man of around 19, one who was limp and unconscious. Roused by the spell, Karal opened his eyes for the first time in this new world into which he had been thrown – and could not see.

"Where am I?" Karal asked. He felt washed in light, like he had gone through his ritual of purification a thousand times. Like Vkandis was holding his hand. He couldn't see, but he wasn't afraid.

"You have been captured by the Heralds of Valdemar in battle, Karsite," Tylendel said. "And we need to know now whether you are responsible for any deaths outside of battle."

Karal immediately thought about the mage storms, his acting as a Channel, everyone trying to prevent the magical backlash from destroying the entire world. "I hope I am not," he said. "I hope I will never be. In battle or out of it."

"A likely story, Karsite," Tylendel said. You were on the field with the rest of them. "Wait for the Truth Spell, Van." He could see the doubt and sympathy forming on his lover's face. "You can never trust a Karsite."

"Van – Vanyel?" Karal said. "They used to call you Demon Rider. I mean, when I grew up." He spoke without fear. He knew the man was selfless, brave, would never in a million years consort with demons. He had felt him in his head, after all.

"You must speak the Truth," Tylendel intoned, as the blue light of the truth spell rose over Karal's head.

"And yet you are not what they thought you were. You are life-bonded. You are full of love. I wish that everyone could be." Karal started to cry. For all that he loved Natalie, it was not a sexual love. It never would be. They were awkward. They would always be too far apart.

He stood up and began to walk towards the pair of Heralds, guessing where they were by their voices, without sight. "Did it work? Did we survive the storm?"

"Don't move. You are still a prisoner, for now, even if you committed no crime. Listen to my question and stay still. Did you slaughter anyone outside of battle?" Karal had not yet answered his question under the spell.

"Of course not. I never would. I'm a Priest of the Sunlord Vkandis. I would never, never – no matter what. Never."

They put him aside in the corner of the room, where he lay still and suffering as he heard the others, one by one, confess to and pay for their crimes.


	2. Daughter of the Sun

Karal was being kept as a prisoner of war. Though he remembered his future with Solaris and even knew, without sight, Vanyel and Tylendel, they didn't know him.

"And what is it you do, Karsite?" Tylendel shared a look with Vanyel. "Right on the battlefield, yet you never hurt a fly."

"I'm a Sun Priest," Karal said.

Sun Priests were at the forefront of the atrocities in Karse.

"So, you live among murderers. Though you're too young to have become one yet yourself."

"I'm the Karsite ambassador to Valdemar," Karal said softly. His mind was turning, exhausted from the Channeling. "I'm Karal."

Vanyel lifted him by the arm and walked him to the threshold of the prison. Looking over the battlefield Vanyel saw the destruction wrought by the demons the Sun Priests had called. "How do you excuse this, ambassador? How can we negotiate with this?"

"I don't see." Karal said. "I can't, literally, see."

Vanyel looked at Karal's eyes then, the pupils unfocused and flecked with warm light.

"I have a feeling I am meant to find out," Karal continued. "Do I have your permission to leave?"

Vanyel shook his head. But his gifts for empathy and thought sensing were enough to let him know he was with a beautiful man, a man with a beautiful soul. He had served at the Karsite border for years. He hated the Karsites. But it was undeniable. "Stay with us," he said, removing the man's bonds. "Get him something to eat, please, Lendel. He's been through something awful."

Tylendel brought Karal soup and bread, watching him, completely unused to sightlessness, struggle to eat. "Shall we make room for him in the barracks? He's no danger to us. But Elspeth will need to hear about this, and we have no precedent just release him. Do you feel what I feel when you touch his mind, Vanyel? He's been used for some great power."

Vanyel nodded, running his hand along Tylendel's thigh. "Like when I helped you make a gate, before my potential awoke, and we rescued Staven. But I see your meaning. Some mage could be using him, even if he's committed no crimes of his own. And it's not blood magic, no. But hurtful to him. It ripped his sight away and blinded him."

"He'll be well treated but not allowed to leave. If the power that used him gets him back, he's a threat to Valdemar."

Vanyel nodded. And yet, there was something too familiar, too close to home about that channel.

They set up a space next to their room in the barracks and Vanyel set a ward on the door, to wake him if the Karsite left, or some Karsite-hating soldier came in to wreak revenge on the prisoner. He went into bed and wrapped his arms around Tylendel, savoring the familiarity of him, kissing his neck. "We did what we had to, k'chara," he said. And he let that long-enjoyed closeness pull him down into relaxation and sleep.

Karal awoke, knowing where and when he was, because Vkandis was the power that was using his channel, and Vkandis needed him to know. But the God clashed with the feelings of awkward affection, inadequacy, the doubts of an inexperienced 19 year old who doubted he had practical skills beyond being a secretary, and retreated as soon as he came, lest he overwhelm Karal. And Karal was left with knowledge—that Ma'ar had been behind the centuries long corruption of The Sunpriests; that he had poisoned the land of the temple with blood magic and the calling of demons; that until the land was healed, Vkandis could for no great time dwell in Karse. That the sickness of the land weakened faith in the God. And lastly, that just as Hardorn had been healed from Ancar, Karse could be healed from demons. It could take immense power. It could cost his life. And he knew where he needed to go first was nearby.

He was thinking of Natalie as he approached the door, not just of her wild thick hair and the hints of her breasts under her blues, but of the way she approached ideas of what to do with theorems and proofs. That she could still fall victim to an explosion— because nothing was without risk — but that she knew what she was getting into. And as he blindly groped for the door, trusting the God to move him like a chess piece, he wondered which of them would be lucky, which of them would win.

Vanyel's alarm ward woke him from his sleep, and within seconds he was up, pulling the blind Karsite away from the door. The young man instinctively tried to throw him off, and he resisted the urge to mage-tie him. He already knew this was no murderer, not even a soldier, but from his mind touch — he had to be careful who was using this channel. He gave in and bound the man's arms.

"We have treated you well, for a member of an enemy army. A person we don't know," he said.

"I beg your pardon," said Karal, in Valdemaran only slightly accented. "But truly I am your allied Ambassador. I ask you as an ally —"

"I have never met you," Vanyel said.

"And yet you have been more intimate with my mind than my dreams are." Karal slid to the ground. "It doesn't matter if you believe it. It matters that it's true."

Vanyel lifted him from the ground easily and sat him on the bed. The things he felt reaching out with his Empathy and touching this man's mind were astounding. . "Tell me."

"When I tell you – if I am able to convince you it is true, even though it seems impossible— if you come to believe it is true, then help me. I want to stop these demons. I want to end this war. I want Solaris to call herself the Daughter of the Sun."

The star glow in his eyes was vivid as he spoke, gradually fading. His blind eyes turned inward like he was sharing his mind with an intimate friend.

"And I wish gender didn't exist. That I was neither male nor female. That I was just me."

Vanyel put an arm around him. A platonic touch. "Karal. Sometimes I wonder if I should have liked women more than I did, growing up. Not sexually, personally. But every time someone insulted me, it was by comparing me to a woman. I didn't know it was wrong then. Even until now, I didn't really—"

"Vanyel. I love reading histories, remembering details, taking clear notes, absorbing the big picture of things." Karal said. "But they looked down on me because these are things that women excel in." He smiled gently. "Women and priests," he said. "As much as I love Natalie, as much as I hate to be alone, I'm afraid I will never—" He cut off. "I just wish there were no genders," he said, leaning into Vanyel's shoulder. "But more than that I wish Karse still had its goodness. Its God. Please let me go where Vkandis wants me. He brought me here. He knows where I need to be."

The larger wards around the barracks screeched a warning. "Demons, Karal. Damn it." He left to get ready, to plan with Tylendel, to meet Yfandes. He was distracted by the screams of soldiers, a man's arm cut off at the shoulder, a levinbolt to save another man. Karal walked out the door, the alarm bleating out unnoticed, to the temple of Vkandis nearby. He knew the formal passages, the ones Karsite priests, corrupt or not, had known by heart for centuries. He passed himself off. The temple was almost abandoned within as the murderous ones called their demons outside. "Solaris?" He called for her, though why would she be here, here in this time away from his own time? He sent the stubbornly androgynous woman a thought along the channel that was frequented by the God. "You're the Daughter of the Sun, Solaris. Not the Son of the Sun. Help me?"

He felt her in his mind. "Are you ready to clean the temple, Sister?"

"I'm ready, Brother."


	3. In the Temple

In the temple, underneath the throne of the High Priest, Karal felt a symbol of interlocking squares, with great lines in the shape of flames passing through and around them, etched and painted into the surface of the floor.

Without warning, he felt himself shoved back, the heavy gold throne collapsing onto his chest, the hot breath of a man or demon – he didn't know – filling him with terror.

"I've got him, Brother," Solaris said in his mind. Hold a focus. Let me in.

Karal pushed himself onto his knees, and sat with his hands palms up, what Ulrich had taught him was a receptive pose. "It lets anyone who is of the hand-taking sort come up and take your hand," he said. And Karal gathered demons were not the hand-taking sort, though even as he sat there, something stabbed into his leg, and something – debris flying, from where he didn't know – slammed into his head.

He focused on sitting at home in his own time in the temple, in the meditative pose, and feeling Ulrich take his hand. He thought of Solaris – her beauty, her mesmerizing thoughtfulness – and Natalie. And he felt the touch in his hand and his mind at the same time.

"Stay with me, Sister," he said. He could hear the voices of the Heralds and the Valdemaran soldiers, the sounds of men screaming, the crashes of trees felled by magic, the warmth of the temple, which he feared had been set on fire.

"It will take a while, Karal. Can you hold it open wider? Just a little longer. It took them centuries to build it – it will take – I don't know how long to heal the wound."

He was kneeling like this when Tylendel burst into the temple, two priests following hard on his heels. He was unable to see what was happening or to move.

"You!" Tylendel cried. Karal turned his head.

"You can't be distracted!" Solaris reminded him. "Keep the channel wide."

He turned his face back to face the throne and its etched symbols.

Around him, he heard a cacophony of spells, the priests chanting, a tingling, the roar of a demon. Maybe more than one.

And he could hear the hooves of Tylendel's companion, and someone shouting in the Valdemaran tongue.

Meanwhile, he knew from the Daughter of the Sun that the seven centuries of damage was a third of the way healed, just in this short time, by the power channeled through her and him from Vkandis, since the Sun god could not directly bear exposure to the disease.

"Reach out and feel the etchings on the floor," Solaris said. Can you feel where the flames are now?"

Karal touched the floor and felt that the depictions of flames covering the overlapping box-etchings had receded, leaving some of the boxes less engulfed, some even close to whole.

"The overlapping boxes are the different peoples and cultures of Karse," Solaris said. "When the flames have receded, the destruction that has been perpetrated on them will be undone."

Arvin, the High Priest of the Demon-Wielders of Karse, noticed that someone was blocking his latest work – a three headed dragon capable of decimating a village in minutes – from entering his Gate. "Traitor," he said, lifting the throne from where it had fallen on the floor, and bashing it into the man kneeling beside it. Karal crumpled flat on the floor, and a second later, Arvin burst into flames. Solaris had to leave the channel, which had closed without Karal's will, and the remainder of the healing had yet to be done.


	4. The Lost Battle

Vanyel banished an ice-breathing saber-toothed demon that guarded the door to the temple Lendel had run into a minute before, and was almost sorry he had when the heat engulfed him. The temple was on fire. He saw Tylendal slumped under the unmoving form of a green dragon, and saw that flames were spreading down the dragon's tail. He lifted his lifebonded onto Gala's back, and only then, knowing Lendel was safe, did he gather his wits enough about him in order to call rain.

Yfandes was telling him to get out — _Before I lose you, Chosen,"_ and the sight of her mane covered in deep cuts from the demons' claws, filled him with pain. She stood near Gala at the door to the temple but was blocked from entering. _Tell Gala to run,_ he said. _Keep Lendel safe for me._

He started to make his way towards the door, pushing aside debris, a fallen throne — and underneath he thought he saw his former prisoner, dead.

Yfandes screamed as a new group of Sunpriests burst in the door of the temple. Vanyel let out a mage blast to fling away two men, and send himself so close to empty he worried about his own mage power for the first time in a long time. But the nodes near here were changed beyond recognition, corrupted by blood magic, and he couldn't draw that magic without flinching back, much less feed on it or use it.

He could feel Yfandes' terror— _Leave, get help! I can't live without you. Leave, or we'll both die!_ And he knew that she was right— that is, if he could leave. But the men who had entered the temple outnumbered him ten to one, and his mage power was burnt to the dregs. As they pulled him to his feet and bound his hands, he heard them screaming for Arvin, the High Priest. Where was Arvin, so they could show him they had captured the Demonrider, the hated Vanyel Ashkevron? And then the kicks and blows as the rumor circulated that Arvin had been killed in the battle, burned beyond recognition.

Vanyel reached out through the haze of pain and felt for his link with Yfandes. She was over the border, at the barracks on the Valdemaran side of the border. A healer was tending her physical wounds, but her mind still screamed for him.

He felt for his link with Lendel — _Stay safe, Ashke —_ and focused on it for a long moment, letting it draw him out of the spasms of pain, the torture his body was enduring.

There was a meditation technique he learned in Haven, one that relied on mind power instead of mage power, a tool of last resort. Using this tool walled off the nerves from sending their signals of pain, walled off the mind from receiving and acting on those signals. Dimly, through the fog of this tool, he saw that the body of the blind Karsite was being lifted off the floor and being bound in chains as well, and he felt only relief— _he lives, perhaps —_ before being half marched, half carried, into a barred and warded cell covered with filth and bloodstains— the temple's dungeon.

"I saw Arvin attack him," he heard one of the priests say, as the blind man was dragged in behind him. So let the traitor cool his heels with the Demonrider. Our Lord will have the worst of his enemies as a sacrifice."

The Karsite priests and soldiers left the prisoners, distracted by a funeral of State, for Arvin, the High Priest who called himself Son of the Sun, was dead, and rules and rituals were to be followed to determine his successor. Dead at the hands of the Herald Tylendel, who even now was frantic with worry on the other side of the border, waiting for Vanyel's return.


	5. Borderhame

_Solaris?_ She had been in his head, but had she been there, physically there? _Vkandis?_ He felt that warmth like a distant hum, and awoke.

 _Karal?_ He heard Herald Mage Vanyel's voice in his head, as the mage sent him a mind-image of the cell that held them.

Karal shuddered, because he did know, from a faint memory of his early childhood, that they were in the Cell of Sacrifice— located under the temple, it held special enemies to Karse, enemies that would be denounced in a public ceremony before being executed—or as the priests put in, in the midst of their blood magic, "sacrificed."

The amount of pain it caused Vkandis to have such things happen in his name, Karal knew well. Plus that he, though a God, was so weakened as to be powerless to stop it.

A thought struck Karal, that despite the common superstitions he had grown up with— that the Heralds of Valdemar were demons— that he could recall no great love for the brutality of the Sunpriests, for their kidnapping and murder of children, cursed though they might be. No matter what justifications the priests used to give, a cursed, or gifted child still was someone's child, loved or missed.

As he told Vanyel they were below the temple, he added, "And we are near the village of Borderhame. It's about a half day's walk."

Vanyel tried to work out why the Karsite said this, why it mattered.

"I think Vkandis wants me to start a revolution," Karal said, "and I wish I knew just the first step of figuring out how."

Meanwhile, back at the border, Tylendel was interrogating the prisoners as he usually did, but he was doing it without Vanyel — Vanyel, who had been captured and tortured by these people.

"Where is he?" He screamed at the next one. The bodies of the previous three lay nearby.

"I don't know, Lord Herald," the older man replied, shaking, in Karsite, which Tylendel, through his long experience at the border, understood well.

The man had to be nearing 60, and Tylendel, out of respect for his own father, who had been murdered in his youth, could not bring himself to treat him as he had the others. "And where are you from, to not know the local area?"

The man paused. "You would destroy my home if I told you. You'd kill my children— my grandchildren."

"Kill your grandchildren?" Tylendel scoffed. "I'm a Herald of Valdemar, and you believe I will kill your grandchildren?" The older man looked at the bodies slumped next to him. At one in particular. "You have killed my cousin's friend already. "As bloody, as brutal as they are, if what the priests say is true…" He trailed off crying, for he also remembered children the priests had killed, toddling, playing with dolls and toys.

"I give you my word," said Tylendel, "that if you win me the support of your settlement, not only will I not harm your grandchildren, I will prevent _anyone_ from hurting them, to the best of my power."

The older man considered himself a good judge of personality. He had lived a long life, and would have died long ago if his judgment had been weak. And so though he knew it could be a death sentence, he trusted the instinct of a moment. "I'm from Borderhame," he said. It's the Karsite town closest to Valdemar, and perhaps we have seen more of you Heralds than most. So many of our young men have been conscripted as soldiers. Do you understand what you've done?"

And the hatred of Karsites that always prevented Tylendel from feeling guilt when he executed prisoners dissolved enough that for an instant, he could barely stand to be within his own mind. "I'm sorry," he said, choking with tears as he looked at the lifeless face of this man's cousin's friend.


End file.
